At Lyme Regis, my favourite beach is the capricious East Cliff, visible only at low tide and reached by a 114-step walkway. The path drops through rough scrub, a feral mix of wild plants and garden escapes, sizzling with grasshoppers. Buddleia flourishes next to sallow bushes, hazel and gorse, while sour blackberries are already reddening among the brambles. Somewhere in the tangle, a stonechat calls; its sound, like two dry pebbles clicked together, echoes the faint tap of fossil hammers from the beach below.
You emerge on the sea wall, a wide, curving promenade edged with metal railings that gives the feel of being on the deck of a ship. Lyme Bay spreads before you, spangle-sparkling in the sun all the way to the Isle of Portland on the distant horizon. Immediately below the wall lies a tidal stretch of flat rock, thickly colonised by periwinkles, limpets and barnacles. It is a lovely place for a paddle, and when I went there last week there were lots of families enjoying the gentle slosh of the turning tide.
A child with a fossiling hammer
As I walked, I passed a small child banging away with her fossiling hammer. Her mother caught my eye and smiled. At the exact moment I was about to smile back, I realised that the child was not bashing a rock as I had supposed, but a large limpet. Before I could think, I said: "She's hammering a limpet, which is a live creature." "Oh," said the mother, at a loss how to respond. The child continued to smash. I walked on.
A second encounter in Penzance
This was the second time in a few weeks I have seen kids killing limpets with the knowledge of nearby adults, who do nothing. The first occasion, ironically given the name of the place, was at Battery Rocks in Penzance, where a couple sat watching a boy eviscerating one of these molluscs. Noticing a stranger looming near, the man said to his partner: "Is that a vegan coming to protest?"
Does this matter? I think so. As adults it is up to us to guide kids' natural curiosity so it becomes care for the living world. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is available now at guardianbookshop.com.
